Love of Fate
Deeper discussion of Amor Fati, a broadcasting announcement, and thoughts about making the best of mercury retrograde
-Good morning everyone! I wrote this last night, and as far as I knew, pressed send just before I went to bed. It appears I only saved it as a draft, how’s that for retrograde Mercury? Better late than never though so here you go-
I believe that most of you come to this letter for advice and discussion around the nuts and bolts of practical magic. I know that’s what I’m always looking for when I decide to leave my velvet-lined witch’s tower and browse the world wild web.
I hope you’ll indulge me this time in some discussion of one of my other great loves, tabletop roleplaying games. My uber-serious occultists, my hard line scholar-karcists will still find some astrological discussion and some worthy links at the end of this letter. And I’ll be back on my core bullshit next week. As you’ll see, in this case, the two subjects of RPGs and Occultism connect anyhow.
This week I want to write a bit more about Amor Fati, as I realized I haven’t written about it here since November.
For anyone who does not know, Amor Fati is the tarot-based tabletop roleplaying game that I released a few months ago.
As this letter mostly goes out to occultists, witches, and magical practitioners, some of you are probably asking yourselves what on earth a “tarot-based roleplaying card game” could actually be.
To put it simply, it’s a game you play with your friends, using decks of tarot cards, where you create an original story together. If you know anyone who plays Dungeons & Dragons, that’s an example of a “tabletop role-playing game”. This is really its own thing though.
If you’ve played a lot of tabletop games, you should know that this one is a bit unusual. I’ve been playing RPGs since I was 10 and I haven’t seen one that works quite like this. It moves differently than other games.
I call it a roleplaying card game.
Everyone playing Amor Fati, including the GM, has a hand of tarot cards in front of them. Anyone can play any number of cards at any time. The cards they play weave the story being told.
Ah, and I should also mention that the secret mission behind Amor Fati was really to teach my long-time gaming group, none of whom are all that into magic, how to read tarot. If you don’t have a tarot reading practice, just by playing the game you’ll absorb the basics. It’s designed that way!
I’m happy to say that several of my friends who thought tarot was a little too out there for them are now reading for themselves as a result of this game. Amor Fati also explores some basics of occult thought, especially humoral theory and its connection to the elements. It arose out of my love of these things, and my contention that they’re broadly helpful for life. I got sick of lecturing my friends about the basics, so I decided to make a game that acts as a primer for working in the occult.
Nowadays plenty of people are playing Amor Fati who don’t really have any intention of practicing magic, but I figure that’s good too. It pleases me to see that Amor Fati also works simply as a game. And I feel psyched that the nuggets of true occult philosophy and the quotes I put in from Paracelsus and Hildegard von Bingen are reaching some pretty outwardly anti-magic people. It’s like hiding the flagrantly enchanted vegetables in the atheist materialist kids’ food
Amor Fati is on my mind because I played it again last weekend with a new group I’ve started online. I really prefer to play RPGs in person, but this group was created to share Amor Fati with a wider audience - to stream our gameplay online and broadcast this creation to the world.
So I’m pleased to announce that we will be going live with Amor Fati next month, on February 5th!
That’s pretty far away, but don’t worry dear reader, I’ll remind you. I may also do a live q & a afterwards, to answer questions and talk with people who have been playing the game for the past few months. If that sounds interesting to you, I’d love if you dropped a line by replying to this letter.
As far as the game’s title, Amor Fati is latin for “Love of fate”. It’s a concept that comes from the Stoic philosophers. My interest in it comes from the fact that reading tarot cards, or playing games of chance both rely on fortune, on fate.
Of course in the ancient and medieval world, the Fates were often conceived of as a group of goddesses, as reflected in this quote by the Roman emperor & philosopher Marcus Aurelius, which is often given as an example of the philosophical concept called Amor Fati:
“Hand yourself over to Clotho voluntarily, and let her spin you into whatever she pleases.”
Clotho was the Fate responsible for spinning the life thread of each human being.
After Clotho spun the thread of a person’s life, her sister Lachesis would measure the thread, and the third sister, Atropos, would eventually cut it, ending the person’s life.
These are just their Greek names. These three Fates, also known as the Moirai, have many other names across the numerous cultures where they show up throughout time.
I like to use the mercury retrograde periods to catch up, to double back over things I may have missed or passed over too quickly. Hence this review letter going into more detail about what this game even is.
Other than gaming, I’m using this time to plan my year ahead. I’m excited to be growing this endeavor of sharing my magic and my creations with you all as 2023 unfolds. If you’d like my advice on planning your own year to come, with tarot, astrology, and my personal mediumship in the mix, there are still just a few! open slots for my Year Ahead Readings (closing 1/31.)
I’m excited for the upcoming direct stations of Mercury (1/18) and Mars (1/12). And there’s a neat-looking Venus-Saturn conjunction happening on 1/22 that I’m starting to scheme about.
My work at this time really seems to be about discernment, about harmonizing my bizarre aquarian rhythms with the rhythms of nature and the yearly cycles. Of course I’m turning to Saturn at this moment, Saturnus as the Lord of Time, of Consequence, and even of Agriculture. He knows how to plan things well and how to wait for things to truly ripen.
It’s odd, the new year has started, but it feels like it really hasn’t yet. I wonder how the next month will feel for all of us. Soon all planets will be direct for the first time in quite a while. But we’re not there just yet.
If you’re struggling to get things off the ground, or things seem to be slipping through your fingers, just know you’re not alone. I’m having much more success when I’m slow and steady, when I’m planning and scheming, than with any kind of bold actions I’ve tried to take in the last little while.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the links between magic and what we usually call “the arts”. Especially performance and its utility in ritual. My thoughts are still forming, but I’d like to write on this more in the near future.
But then, let’s have some links for now, to pass the time, to plug into inspiration:
-Recently I enjoyed revisiting Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, a melancholic and visually beautiful film that was a favorite of mine as a teenager. It deals with a lot of questions that are central to magical practice, like desires and fulfilment and how we even handle it when we actually have our wishes granted…
-This is a fascinating documentary on Zar rites in Sudan. A good corollary to my sharing of a video on Umbanda in an earlier newsletter (check the archive if you missed it) Zar is a tradition of possessory healing trance which is rarely written about in English. Really interesting to see how many commonalities this has with other forms of group possessory trance work globally.
-Joseph Peterson, of the fantastic esoteric archives, gives a presentation on a witch’s handbook confiscated by the Venetian inquisition here. The handbook in question was published a few years ago as Secrets of Solomon and I’ve seen it on a few peoples’ shelves, but it seems that this presentation flew under the radar. It may not be super optimized asmr delishious, its quite crunchy, but i like that unconcerned charm. Peterson gives lots of background and historical context, and even a few stories about the practitioners it was confiscated from.